Anyone who has ever been hounded by a debt collector has probably fantasized about giving the collector a taste of his or her own medicine. That fantasy may be much easier to realize than most people imagine, as the story of a Dallas debtor shows.
Laws are in place at both the federal and the state level to protect all Americans from overly aggressive debt collection practices.
A while back I wrote an article about the importance of keeping records and receipts, as they are necessary in a bankruptcy case (see http://bklaw.com/bankruptcy-blog/2008/11/receipts-and-documentation/). This requirement was recently revisited by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in In re Caneva, 550 F.3d 206 (9th Cir. 2008). In that case, the court held that a debtor filing bankruptcy would be denied his discharge because he failed to maintain or preserve adequate books and records from which the Trustee in bankruptcy (and creditors) could assess the debtor’s financial condition.
This is one of the prerequisites to obtaining a discharge in a Chapter 7 case. 11 U.S.C. 7
chapter 7 bankruptcyWe all have heard of chapter 7 bankruptcy, although many of us could not give a precise answer to what exactly it means. Every day people make mistakes when filing for bankruptcy that probably could have been avoided if they had better understood the different types of bankruptcy.
Certainly no one wants to involve in bankruptcy proceedings. Anyone who does will have to have debts that greatly exceed his or her net worth and, in addition, have no visible or viable means of paying back the debts, so without a doubt they will definitely want to learn some How to File Bankruptcy Facts to make the whole ordeal easier and less problematic.
There are a number of different forms of bankruptcy such as chapter 11 bankruptcy and the more common chapter 7 bankruptcy. Full Post…
In an age of disappearing pensions and rapidly shrinking Social Security funds, individual retirement accounts are more important than ever – but many Americans have no official retirement accounts, connected to their jobs or otherwise. The Associated Press reports that President Obama is launching a plan to change that.
The plan has at its center one serious statistic: almost half of American workers have no retirement savings option through their jobs. That’s frightening, considering that, as a nation, we don’t have a great track record of saving money.
The retirement savings legislation, still in the drafting phase, at this point includes four main parts to improve Americans’ chances of living comfortably after they stop working. The fou